


If Love Wants You: Where You Are While Your Body Is Here

by blessedharlot



Series: If Love Wants You [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Angst, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Redemption, F/M, Gen, Hitchhiking, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Mention of torture, Panic Attacks, mention of limb loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:25:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13300668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: “This isn’t permanent, Steve. I promise I’ll be back. Please don’t worry. There’s just some things I have to do.”He used a burner address that couldn’t receive a reply. Bucky told himself that he made his choice purely for safety reasons, and not because it meant Steve couldn’t write back and yell at him.-=-=-=-Steve, Sam and Nat had offered Bucky a safe, peaceful place to heal. But quiet domesticity doesn't meet Bucky's needs... at least not now.Just what is Bucky looking for? What does he need to do? And how will he do it?





	1. All You've Lost, All You've Touched

**Author's Note:**

> The series "If Love Wants You" begins shortly after the events of Captain America: Civil War. Previously in the series, Nat told Steve about her past with Bucky, and Bucky's reaction to his old trigger sequence has been erased through a Wakandan treatment plan. Bucky and Nat rekindled their relationship haphazardly. Bucky tried living together undercover with Nat, Steve and Sam, in a house Steve had bought, but Bucky felt the call to be somewhere else.
> 
> And gosh, I left you on a cliffhanger for way too long! Resolution is on the way!
> 
> Every title in this series comes from Anne Michael's wonderful poem, "Last Night's Moon."

_ “This isn’t permanent, Steve. I promise I’ll be back. Please don’t worry. There’s just some things I have to do.” _

Bucky hit send before Steve would be up the next day. He really didn’t want him to worry.

He used a burner address that couldn’t receive a reply. Bucky told himself that he made his choice purely for safety reasons, and not because it meant Steve couldn’t write back and yell at him. It didn’t matter whether he avoided messages from Steve or not, he knew just what he’d say.  And Bucky’s chest wasn’t quite so tight as it had been, now that he was worrying them from afar instead of worrying them up close.

He walked a fair distance from the house - several miles - quietly cutting through the darkness. He didn’t want to feed the busybodies that gossipped around in town if he could help it. After he’d put distance between himself and any prying eyes, hitchhiking was the easiest way to continue. 

Measuring by news cycles, it had been forever since his face was in the paper. With a drab olive Army jacket on, and his beard, he was now interchangeable with most any other weathered, itinerant veteran around.

A few stretches of time spent on the shoulder of the road led to rides from a chatty long-haul semi driver, a scruffy rock band napping in a cold van, and a mild-mannered older gentleman in a dusty Cadillac.

Sharing a car with someone, it turned out, now had a lot to do with learning their musical taste. He heard hip hop that made him nod along to the beat, whether he was listening or not. He heard pop so saccharine it made his teeth hurt. He heard Steve’s favorite standards and Sam’s favorite funk. Across three states, he heard a couple hundred songs. One song in particular had a few words spoken before the music started, words that stuck with Bucky. “I learned in Korea,” the voice said, “that I would never again, in my life, abdicate to somebody else my right and my ability to decide who the enemy is.”

In between the music lessons from strangers was the familiarity of being alone, on the side of the road, walking and waiting for the next ride.  The asphalt and gravel felt comforting under his boots. The weight of the bag on his shoulder felt like just enough of a tether back to the house, and the people who loved him.

Eventually he made it to the city with the freight hub he wanted. Stowing away on mail planes still wasn’t that difficult, not for him. He knew a few tricks, and he was very good at being very still for a very long time.

 

**Madripoor**

 

Bucky had killed the British ambassador to Madripoor in 1956. 

He’d killed the ambassador, and a ballroom of people. Most were visiting low-to-mid-level dignitaries. 

“Acceptable losses,” he was told at the time.

Some articles on the incident from English-language sources mentioned that wounds on the dead indicated several may have been interrogated for information. In the weeks following the attack, resistance to fascist leadership in two nearby South Asian countries had crumbled.

Bucky didn’t remember being involved in the operations in the neighboring countries. What he did know was that Tamil news sources covering the event mentioned two employees of the hotel were also murdered… a kitchen worker named Banhi and his wife Lalan, a maid who happened to be near the kitchen at the time. Possibly visiting her husband. 

Bucky could remember her brown eyes and the graceful slope of her nose and the horror etched in her brow when he shot her.

They had a son named Ruchir, 4 years old at the time of their murders.

After nearly a week of travel, Bucky walked under a dripping Madripoor sun, down the muggy road that would take him to Ruchir’s current address. 

From the time Bucky had decided to disembark on this trip, he had followed this path nearly unthinkingly.  He had taken this journey as though an inner compass had magnetically brought him here. But with each further step Bucky took toward his goal, the ground now felt less solid underneath him.

The man owned a small terraced house in a less expensive neighborhood off the upper coast of the city-state. Bucky felt a surprising rush of relief that Ruchir appeared to have some measure of financial security.

When he found the house, Bucky stepped past a ragged chain-link fence and into a yard cluttered with storage bins, plastic tables and chairs and a laundry drying rack. Two rows of lush, well-attended plants hid behind latticework - one row in large pots scraping the concrete walkway and the other hanging mildly against a fence. The breezeway to the house had more shelves full of boxes. The house was solid, but had telltale marks high on one wall that indicated the shingles above needed repair. 

Bucky made his way up the walk and knocked on the front door. Then he waited, suddenly working hard to keep his breathing steady.

A stocky man in his sixties came to the door.

[“Yes?”]

Bucky froze. His mouth went dry. And several moments of silence passed.

[“Can I help you?”] the man asked.

[“You are Ruchir?”] Bucky croaked out.  _ Dammit, Bucky, you were better at Tamil than that _ , he thought to himself.

The man looked torn between hospitality and suspicion. [“Yes, what?”], he said.

Bucky’s mind was a blank. He stood there gaping.

[“What do you want?”] Ruchir demanded quietly. [“How do you know my name?”]

_ Jesus Christ, Buck,  _ he thought to himself. _ What are you here to do? _

“I… um… want to...” Bucky accidentally reverted to English, for something to say.

“English?” He matched Bucky’s inadvertent language choice. “What do you want?”

_ Are you going to tell him what you did? Confess? Unburden yourself here in his yard? On his front step?  _

[“I… I want to help.”] Bucky stammered out.

[“What?”] The man looked even more confused.

[“I want to help. May I help with… with anything?”]

[“What?”] Ruchir searched Bucky’s face for understanding, and shook his head. [No. Go away.”]

[“Your roof is leaking.”]

[“Who are you?”] he muttered.  [“It doesn’t matter, go away. Go away, leave.”]

Ruchir stepped back inside and moved to close the door.

[“I’m… I don’t want anything in return. Please may I fix your roof?”]

[“Don’t touch my house.”] The man pointed at him now, and switched back to English. “Do you understand me? Don’t touch my house. Leave now.”

Ruchir quickly took a step toward Bucky and stood tall, attempting to intimidate him. Bucky didn’t feel threatened in the slightest. But he was bewildered, and angry with himself that he had upset the man. He took a step back, trying to give Ruchir what he wanted.

Bucky then spun around and quickly strode away, hearing the click of a door lock behind him. 

He walked several blocks away before he stopped, somewhere, his mind a blank. 

He sat down on the curb, not knowing why. His right hand was clammy, and he realized he was sweating far more than necessary in the warm weather. He felt his throat close up and his heart race... possibly racing right out of his chest, he wasn’t sure. His mind said there was danger, though his senses registered no one following him, no suspicious characters, no signs of snipers or surveillance around him.

He thought for sure he’d somehow ruined everything he had ever wanted to do. He couldn’t think or breathe.

Then he flashed on Sam. Breathing heavily, holding his chest, on some random day a few weeks back. Sam, managing his own trauma.

Bucky was having a panic attack, he realized. He checked around him again, and saw no danger, and that confirmed it. His head was in a tailspin. That was all. It would pass. He hated it, but it wouldn’t last. He had the conscious thought that he would probably die, and that didn’t bother him much. But he worried he might hurt somebody else, or be taken again to be used. So he clasped his hands together and sat there staring at them, determined to weather the panic in a self-contained way.

_ Remember to breathe _ , he heard Steve say.  _ It’s just shell shock, no big deal. All it does is make you eccentric. _

He carefully watched a small patch of asphalt directly in front of him being reliably still. And he kept breathing.

His brain kept working the problem, whether he wanted it to or not. 

_ Are you going to open this old wound of Ruchir’s? What good does that do him? _

Bucky reached for some understanding, and found none. If he didn’t know any better he’d swear his chest was full of jagged glass. Everything and everyone he'd ever broken, all the shards and splinters and deathly dust, still frozen there inside him.

It didn't matter that he didn’t choose any of it in the first place. It was still there.

He thought this was the way he'd pull it out. He would help those he'd shattered to be whole. Somehow he’d find a way. In the process he might empty himself of all the death and destruction, shard by shard.

But what good would it do them all... if he just handed them back these razor sharp fragments of old horrors?

He couldn’t fix anything. These things would never be repaired. He'd do the opposite of fixing. He couldn’t just... hand them his guilt back.

He'd still be doing harm. He didn't want to do any more damage. He’d done enough of that.

He couldn’t make the decision for this man, to reopen such an old wound. That was presumptuous. But he didn’t know what else to do.

He had nothing else he could think to do.

As he sat there, lost, the slow-creeping mist was turning into rain. And Bucky felt a pain in his stomach. He realized he couldn’t remember he last time he ate anything.

He didn’t have any cash. But he was sturdy enough to stand up now. He numbly noticed a street vendor selling food.

So, he waited until a wealthy white man was passing by and dug up some rusty pickpocketing skills. Bucky got the equivalent of $300 cash out of the deal.

He bought food. Then he ducked under a building’s eaves as the downpour started in earnest, and ate as quickly as he could.

He had only one thought come to him as he numbly ate.

When his food wrapper was empty, he found another rich man and passed by him. And another. The heavy rain helped cover his deficiencies as a thief. He soon had a large wad of big bills. 

He was thankful that darkness was now falling. Bucky retraced his steps and moved silently back onto Ruchir’s property. He dropped the money in the mail slot and left.

He took the long way around to a train station.

_ “Look. I don’t even know what my point is, Steve, okay? I’ve just got to try something.” _

He hit ‘send’ again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Bucky heard was “Anarchy” by Utah Phillips and Ani Difranco.
> 
> MCU!Bucky's past, as it will be constructed in this story, is a combination of comics references and complete fabrication on my part. His assassination of the British ambassador to Madripoor was mentioned in his dossier that Steve read in Captain America vol 5 #11, and I fleshed out that snapshot here.


	2. Try To Keep Everything and Keep Standing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When dialogue is in brackets, they’re not speaking in English.

_ “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, Nat. For the handlers to appear and undo all we’ve accomplished. I know Wakanda’s magic was supposed to be more permanent than that. But I still keep thinking. Maybe if I just do enough, as Bucky again, instead of the Soldier. Maybe I’ll tip the scales far enough that they’d never tip back.” _

He hit send from another burner address.

**Nrosvekistan.**

The deep rumble of the train far above Bucky’s head vibrated down every trestle and brace that surrounded him. He watched the seeming solidity of the underside of the train tracks.

His mind was a blank. It wasn’t quite the same as the numbness that occasionally came and went. It was less ice, and more... hollowness, of his head as well as his heart.

In 1966, Hydra sent Bucky to capture two scientists. During the mission, he sent an entire derailed train raining down on the small village in this valley in front of him, destroying much of it. The accident also unleashed a vicious psychic mercenary aptly named The Drain, who sadistically sucked the will to live out of even more victims. 

The collateral damage on this one haunted Bucky. So senseless. A lot of unlucky people crossed his path over the years, but this was an entire town of unlucky people. No one here did anything to even be targeted. And yet many families would never be the same, after what happened.

Another part of that mission haunted him as well. A combination of electrocution and the strangely powered psychic awakened Bucky’s memories. His old memories broke through the Soldier’s conditioning. Bucky vividly remembered wandering these same streets, wracked with guilt at how Steve would hate what he’d done. It was one of just a handful of times, over the years, that Bucky remembered himself. 

For a few brief days, he had known his own name. And then he didn’t anymore, again. And he did more terrible things. Bucky struggled to keep hold of himself in the enormity of harm done.

He forced himself to focus on this town, here in front of him. Bucky had spent the travel time it took to get here trying to sort out just what he thought he was going to accomplish. Surely there was something he could fix. He just didn’t know what yet.

_ Well _ , Bucky thought.  _ If I don’t fuck it up, maybe someone will let me near their leaky roof this time. _

He haunted the edge of the town awhile, being invisible, still blending in. He turned his collar up against the unseasonable cold, bag slung across his shoulder. He scoped out the town as he wandered and waited. It was still a small village, but it was on the way to a lot of places, so tourists and drifters were tolerated. Or at least ignored.

It had been decades since the incident, and from the outside, the scars of what had happened weren’t obvious. An observer might know what to look for, like which blocks of town had only new buildings on them. But Wilson’s phrasing echoed in Bucky’s head as he scanned the town for evidence… “anybody who bears the weight of what you did.” So many people, all over the globe, caught in these torrrents of trauma that spilled out from his hands. Rivers of violence that dried out over time, and left these hidden marks and buried veins of loss.

He found a shop that carried lumber and construction equipment, then found the small shelter nearby where people looking for day work waited.

It was morning. There might be work. Bucky loitered with the others.

Eventually a man in too clean of a shirt arrived, looking for laborers. Bucky hung back in the crowd, while that first boss pointed at a few men, and they left together. Another man in a clean shirt came, and took more workers. When a third man waved all the rest of them out, Bucky followed, and got into a truck.

He spent the day building the frame for a small warehouse. He pretended he didn’t know the language, to avoid talking. They each got paid too little money for a day’s work. It didn’t make much difference to Bucky’s situation, but he was angry on principle, on the others’ behalf.

The weather had been dry, so he slept that night in his coat, in an undisturbed alleyway behind a fabric shop. No one seemed to pay him much attention.

The next day he tried another shop, with another work stop nearby. This time an orchard owner took Bucky and an older woman, and together they swept every tree in the small field, looking for ripe apples. 

That night he stayed behind a tiny bookstore he’d passed, about half a mile from the orchard. Bookstores, like fabric shops, usually had inoffensive garbage smells. 

On the third morning he was there, he had a different plan. He went and found the tallest church in town. 

The little church was an old stone edifice, ancient and drafty looking. The modest steeple threw a shadow across an even more modest square building close by, made of the same stone. Bucky knew the priest would live there.

He took a deep breath, and knocked on the door there.

A very tiny, balding man came to the door in plain, rumpled bedclothes. His finger held his page in a dusty book.

He looked quickly at Bucky and rattled off the address of one of the shops Bucky had already been to, along with a perfunctory blessing.

Bucky replied quickly but haltingly. He told himself it was to keep up the pretense of not knowing the language.

[“No work for pay please. No money. I have that.”] 

The tiny priest stopped closing the door on Bucky, and looked at him again.

[I help. Fix. Build? I’m strong.”]

The priest blinked.

[“Can I help?”] Bucky asked, biting his lower lip.

The priest looked at Bucky up and down for a long moment. Then he nodded his head. The old man held up a hand that suggested Bucky stay. Then he closed the door.

Bucky waited there, still, feeling strangely nervous. No one had recognized him yet. He didn’t recognize the priest.

About five minutes later, the old priest came to the door again, this time in day clothes. He had the last bite of something in his mouth, still chewing, and he handed a small package to Bucky -- a small piece of bread wrapped in a handkerchief. Bucky ate the bread. It was terrible. He realized he wasn’t sure when he’d eaten last.

The priest pressed a hand to his chest as they began walking.

[“Matviy,”] the man said. Then he extended the hand, palm pointed up.

Bucky nodded. [“James.”]

[“James,”] Matviy said. [“Good name. You are safe, for others?”] he asked pointedly.

[“Yes. Sir.”]

[“Good. Then help, eh?”] 

They walked in silence.

They were soon knocking on the door of a small, squalid house.  Bucky had flashes of leaving his own tolerable childhood homes and walking into the places Steve lived with his family, who never had quite as much money. The yard here in front of them was bare dirt. The front door hung crooked. And this roof definitely needed attention.

Matviy had knocked very loudly, about a dozen times, and then just walked in as though he had permission.

Bucky soon met the shut-in inside -- an ordinary-looking woman, even older than the priest. Bucky searched himself for any memories of her, but found none. Matviy moved to sit down next to her, then turned to Bucky and spoke.

[“Three hours,”] Matviy said.

[“Three hours for what?”] Bucky asked.

Matviy gave him a gently condescending smile and sent a worn hand waving across the whole filthy house.

Matviy immediately began inquiring about the woman’s health, and Bucky could not imagine a less interesting conversation to have. So he took himself into the kitchen. He washed dishes, and - remembering the old folks in his buildings growing up - he trimmed up some of her larger root vegetables and stored them away. He gathered trash - in the kitchen and in the bathroom - and took it out. He gathered all the clothes he could find, which weren’t many, and wrapped them in the bedsheets. He saw no way of washing them - no machine or washboard. So he took them outside, and then realized he’d seen nothing resembling a laundromat since he’d been here. 

One of the hardware stores wasn’t too far away though, so on a wild guess, he headed that way.  Several blocks away he realized what it must have looked like, him leaving the old woman’s house with a large bundle in his hands. Perhaps any neighbors that cared had seen him arriving with the priest. Or maybe he carried the clothes like dirty clothes, and not anything with resale value.

When he arrived at the small store, he got very strange looks.

As he searched the place for clues of what he should do next, his eyes settled on a stack of tins of roof tar. 

He sat the clothes down and found that he had money for some roofing supplies, a large washtub and a washboard. 

The woman who rang up his purchases looked at the pile of clothes with pity. She had a strong regional accent that Bucky didn’t make out well, but she took the clothes and seemed to be telling him to come back later.

He walked most of the supplies he bought back to the house, and carefully found his way onto the roof. It wasn’t completely unworkable, overall, so he focused on just patching the holes he found - three larger ones and a few smaller ones. When he was done, he walked back to the store, and found the laundry washed and spun dry, and waiting in the washtub he’d bought. He walked those back and carefully hung them to dry in the old woman’s yard.

They left at noon, and Matviy nodded with approval at the new shingles on the roof as they left. He walked them down another street, where Matviy met with a very young woman watching two small children. Bucky found enough chicken wire to repair a hole in their fence, and found three runaway chickens in nearby neighborhoods. Catching chickens determined not to be caught was harder than he remembered. It was late in the afternoon when he was done. Bucky waved to Matviy as the priest was saying his goodbyes, and disappeared for the night.

This went on for nearly two weeks, Bucky knocking on the priest’s door, either at break of day or after morning services. Matviy walking them somewhere and pointing to a pile of needs. Bucky finding something to do. He helped complete a tiny shed and cleaned houses and washed clothes and bathed animals and mended another fence. Occasionally someone insisted on giving him food, but he refused money. He didn’t talk any more than he needed to.

Bucky slipped away each night before the priest could offer a place to sleep.

Very early one sleepless morning, he brushed off the alley dust and left town.

_ “Steve, if SHIELD has any sort of database on where to find Nutty Buddies and related snacks, I wouldn’t turn down the intel. Oh wait. I’d have to listen to you talk about what farm work I’m not doing. Never mind.” _

Send.

_ “Nat, just give it to me straight. Do the nightmares ever get less revolting?” _

Send, and burn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mission that Bucky remembers in Nrosvekistan happens in the limited comics series "Winter Soldier: The Bitter March" by Rick Remender, and didn't need much adaptation to fit the MCU setting here.


	3. The Past is Not Our Own

_“Steve, I’ve got no goddamn idea what I’m doing. It’s something important, I know that much. There’s something important I’ve got to make happen. But I really don’t know what.”_

 

**San Pedro**

At some point in time, the Winter Soldier had been working for an American. Not Pierce, though… it was long before Alexander Pierce had him hunting down enemies on US territory. He hadn’t been the first American to control the Soldier.  

Bucky couldn’t remember the other man clearly; he rarely saw him, and he suspected they had put further conditioning on him at some point to forget the man.  But Bucky vividly remembered what kind of work he had accomplished for this previous American boss.

Some time in the early 1980’s, it was quite inconvenient to American business interests that the people of San Pedro ruled their own nation peacefully. It was decided that a man named Castellin Blanco would be installed by the CIA and some other organizations with a  vested interest.

And Bucky was one of the central weapons employed to make that happen.

He remembered coordinating the disappearance of several key agents of social change. He then trained many more operatives to utilize certain torture techniques before he left. Ever since, Blanco had kept in place a brutal regime friendly to the American intelligence community… though his age and the waning of San Pedro’s importance to certain wealthy individuals meant that the regime may be weakening.

Over the last two weeks, Bucky had bought a lot of drinks for old timers at bars up and down the southern border of San Pedro. That earned him a rough understanding of where the now elderly dictator’s grasp had loosened, and which towns had the most resistance action currently building.

And once again, Bucky had no idea how he might heal what he’d done here. Decades of mistreatment and cruel leaders had mired the people in poverty. Infrastructure for the larger population was in shambles. Elderly parents helped their grown children manage with long-ago inflicted mutilations.  Whole ghost towns lay crumbling, where people were driven out and killed simply to spread terror.  

_What can I possibly do here?_ Bucky thought. _How can I help?_

_Who even knows how to fix this?_

When it seemed he’d collected all the intel he would get, he resisted to the urge to keep mulling over his choices, frozen. He picked a town with rumors of an underground resistance. And he walked there.

 

Two days later, he was ladling out soup in the back room of a small church.

The women who ran the kitchen were still a bit wary of him, but had taken the risk of believing him when he said he wanted to help. Elena had even handed him a knife the first day he was there. Bucky had been stunned, and diced the first several pounds of potatoes marveling at the strange trust they’d extended him.

For some meals he chopped vegetables, under Elena’s instruction. Some meals he served, under Lo’s watchful eye. In between, Maria had him lifting heavy things.

The crowds they got were enormous. The church was tiny, but food seemed to pour out onto the whole town twice a day. Bucky hadn’t bothered to ask where the money or food came from. He had a feeling it was from folks who didn’t have much more themselves. Instead, all of his attention went to the exchanges that unfolded in front of him.

Bucky overheard stories of birthdays and anniversaries being celebrated… of baby’s milestones and first dates. He heard people comforting each other after loss. He noticed every meal had someone set up in one corner with some medical supplies, who tended to anyone who approached them. He noticed every time a tiny elder of the city glowed when someone touched them affectionately. Bucky noticed the kids playing in the dirt lot next door… and while their tone didn’t quite mirror the carefree sounds of a far away Brooklyn, they still laughed and played and built imaginative stories.

_This is them, this is how they do good,_ Bucky thought. _The women who run this place are like the old priest, keeping people alive… in more ways than just food._

_This isn’t really me though. This isn’t what I do._

He thought he might be on to something, but he wasn’t sure what.

 

One evening, a few days later, he had ducked out a side door of the church after supper, as per usual. There was a small clearing not too far into nearby woods that had functioned fine as a place to sleep.  He absentmindedly headed that direction, but he soon noticed he was being followed.

Bucky could tell they weren’t professionals. They weren’t terrible at what they were trying to accomplish; they certainly weren’t easy to see. He just knew what to look for.

He knew there was nothing at the clearing that he needed to hide, and he knew it wasn’t the ideal spot for a successful ambush. So he decided the threat level didn’t warrant any course change. He’d play along until he had more information.

He came to the edge of town and saw two more talented amateurs join the first in tailing him. _So they are planning an ambush in the woods_ , he thought. _Let’s see how it goes for them._

Bucky reached the edge of the woods - still about 30 yards shy of his small camp - when his three tails made themselves known. Their prepared weapons clicked behind him, and to either side.

From there, eight more shadows sprang out from ahead of Bucky, showing an impressive level of stealth. Many looked just barely of age, with ragged mismatched clothes, and all had weapons now trained on him. Some blinding flashlights soon followed.

Bucky had never been so happy to kneel and put his hands on his head. Now maybe he could get somewhere.

“James Barnes, the Winter Soldier,” one clear, sure voice spoke. “You are charged with collaboration with the enemy, and repeated counts of the torture, degradation and murder of our people. How do you plead?”

Bucky took a deep breath. “I’m guilty of those things,” he replied quietly.

“Explain why you’re here.” The voice demanded.

Bucky considered his options, and decided on honesty.

“I know what I’ve done. I’m trying to… help.”

“Help?” the voice asked.

“Make amends,” Bucky said.

There was a small, quiet chorus of bitter snorts and angry mumbles. He wouldn’t expect anyone to believe him. He hadn’t earned any trust.

Another voice spoke, this one deeper. “Explain to us why we shouldn’t riddle you with bullets right here?”

Bucky was silent.

“Who are you working for? If it were still Blanco, there’d be little reason for you to be this far out from the cities.”

“I’m not working for… who else is around to worry about besides Blanco?” Bucky asked.

“The other warlords jockeying for territory,” a third voice said. Two others quickly shushed them.

“Who are they?” Bucky asked. It was the key piece of information he couldn’t get in the interviews he’d done his first few weeks here.

“What do you expect to find here?” The first voice took command again.

_Well, that’s a damn good question_ , Bucky thought.

He’d killed their parents. He’d destroyed their families. It didn’t make any difference why. His hands did the killing, the torturing. His hands had the blood. He didn’t deserve to be standing here speaking to them. He didn’t have the right.

_What are you going to do, Buck?_

He took a deep breath, decided to open his mouth and see what came out.

“The things I did here… before...” Bucky said. “They… they shouldn’t have happened. I wasn’t myself and I’m deeply ashamed of what I did.  I’m here because… because there’s no words that would fix what I did. I don’t know that anything ever could. But I thought… I thought…”

He stop to slow down the breathing that had gotten ragged in his chest. The crowd around him was silent, so he tried to finish his sentence.

“I thought if I was here, I might find a way to help change what I helped make here.”

Two of them whispered to themselves, in roughly the direction that the leader’s voice came from. Bucky couldn’t hear what they said but he thought he heard the rhythm of ‘Captain America’ in their conversation.

Bucky stayed right where he was, still staring at the ground, hands behind his head.

The whispering continued.

“Why should we believe you?” said yet another voice.

Bucky’s throat felt dry. He couldn’t care less about his own life. If he died in this dirt and was buried here, it was more than he deserved. But he’d found himself in this ridiculously lucky situation and had absolutely nothing to persuade them with. And all the shame weighed on him.

“I… I can’t think of any reason why you should believe me,” Bucky said honestly. And he left it at that.

This seemed to at least give them pause. And a few of the streams of light blinding him went dark.

“I know what they do,” Bucky said desperately. “I trained some of them. I can train you too.”

“Train us to what?”

“To know their tactics," Bucky replied. "To survive interrogations. To fight back.”

“You think we don’t know how? You think we need some stranger’s help?”

“I know you’re very skilled,” Bucky said. “Probably do plenty of things better than I do. But I have a skill set you could benefit from too.”

One more flashlight went out to his left… the same direction of the voice that he presumed came from the leader. They all waited in silence for some time.

Finally the leader spoke.

“Use your camp tonight. You’ll have observers stay with you. We’ll be back in the morning.”

Bucky breathed a small sigh of relief. He might have an in.

The crowd dispersed while he respectfully watched the ground. He could sense being watched… from near the edge of the woods and from further into the forest.

He got comfortable on his sleeping bag, and slowly fell asleep.

 

He awoke in the early morning light to the sense that someone was coming close. They showed skill again: not just anyone could have gotten as close as they did without Bucky knowing. But they could still improve.

Bucky slowly sat up, and found three people closing in around him. All had short-range firearms drawn on him.

One of them looked like a woman in her late twenties, of average height. She was muscular, with brown skin and brown hair pulled into a bun. When she spoke, she had the same voice from the night before that Bucky intuited was the group’s leader.

“Get up,” she said.

He stood, and someone frisked him.

When the leader was satisfied he didn’t have weapons, she spoke again. “Come with us.”

Bucky complied, and they shepherded him further into the woods… but not the direction he would have expected to find a resistance encampment. There were foothills nearby that would give useful cover, but they were instead moving the other way, toward the closest river. This was still far enough from the town not to draw any tourists, but kept a buffer between Bucky and the seat of their operation.

Bucky approved.

They came to a clearing -- dry, but within earshot of the river. There were four people waiting there, standing to face him, all with weapons holstered. Bucky suspected more in the woods.  

As they came to a stop in the clearing, the leader turned to Bucky.

“You have a chance to prove you’re not lying,” she said. “Here are fighters. Show them something.”

Bucky examined the four people in front of him.

“Well, alright then,” he said.

Bucky paired them up, and had them spar. Within minutes, he found ways to improve their stance and upgrade some of the techniques they relied on. If he had to guess, these were some of their most agile combatants. They weren’t rank amateurs; some may have had some sort of army training somewhere… perhaps from a another similarly procured trainer. But they were still rough in technique.

He was careful not to put anyone in a position where they had to make themselves vulnerable to him. He had them spar with each other. He modeled moves in thin air, or talked them through doing the moves themselves. In that way, they got through several hours of work without Bucky trying the guards’ of leaders’ patience.

The sun got lower in the sky, and Bucky found the participants getting more fatigued. He turned to the leader, and saw her nod to them.

They all stepped away from Bucky.

“Meet us here again tomorrow,” she said.

And they stood there staring at him, waiting for him to leave.

So he did.

 

The next morning they met again, and again for four more days, studying hand-to-hand combat techniques. The participants were quick learners, and athletic, and Bucky was able to build on what they already knew.

There was no chit-chat, no names exchanged. Bucky showed them how to last longer against bigger, tougher, more equipped and more experienced fighters. And he taught them how to kill without weapons on hand. They stuck to the subject matter, and the students improved.

 

Then one morning, Bucky arrived at the space to find they’d dragged in logs for sitting on. One student had a notebook of empty paper and a pen. The same guards with drawn weapons were around them. The same students with holstered weapons were there… with seven more students now sitting with them. The new students were smaller, and younger. One had lost an arm, and two others had canes with them.

Bucky took it all in, and turned to the leader.

“Incendiary devices,” she said. “Tell us what you know.”

“What do you want to accomplish here?” he asked her.

She narrowed her eyes. “I want you to tell us everything you know about blowing shit up.”

Bucky considered the people he saw in front of him. Hand to hand combat had been easy for him to wrap his head around. Everyone needed to know how to defend themselves. But even then… he sometimes worried about training more soldiers. Was he teaching them to survive? Or to get in over their head? Would this information lead them further into capture, and death? Was he just another white guy meddling in their lives again?  

“This is a dangerous game,” he said, noncommittally. “They will never show you any mercy. Under any circumstances.”

Her eyes narrowed. “We’ve noticed.”

_Right,_ he thought. _Fair point._

He looked around and saw kids with fierceness in their eyes, protecting their families and their homes from terrible evil. Healing from devastation they didn’t deserve. He saw them demanding better for themselves.

And he saw kids that hadn’t yet kicked him the hell off the land that meant so much to them.

He was on their sacred ground, and they were asking this of him. That was his answer.

“Alright then,” Bucky said. “I’d like to present you with some ideas for consideration.”

 

He taught them that day about blowing shit up - what resources were accessible or not, traceable or not, and what the pros and cons of each were. The next few days after that were about guerilla tactics of assault.

The next day they began discussing common torture techniques, and how to endure them. He taught them what torturers would look for as signs of breaking, if they meant to leave someone alive. He gave them tells, focal points, and ways to conserve energy. They talked about how the strategies of tyrants had changed over the years, how they sowed horror differently than they used to, with new communications technology. And they pinpointed weaknesses in the regime that could be exploited.

He taught them endurance. He told them what supplies to bring, and they gathered into the clearing what they needed to train each other in giving and enduring waterboarding.

He started another session of hand-to-hand combat techniques -- this time with the smaller, more vulnerable fighters and two original students who wanted to be able to train others with disabilities and health issues.  Bucky took some pride in how much he knew about finding a fighter’s current skills and talents and building on them.

He remembered the Red Room girls he’d trained, and wondered how many were still alive now.

He carried on with the group for nearly five weeks of carefully hidden gatherings.

Bucky thought about all the people he trained, and he wondered how many lives he might have extended. He wondered what impact each of them had on the world, for better and worse. He tried to imagine the whole web of influence, and wondered if any of it would ever balance itself out.

_Maybe I’ve helped Nat survive_ , he thought. _She deserves every chance to live the life she wants._

When he left San Pedro a few days later, several students shook his hand. Even the leader, in her unsentimental way, extended her hand and grasped his when he offered it.

“This knowledge will serve us well,” she said. “Now, please leave.”

Bucky nodded. And he left.

He wondered if it would be enough to get any kind of success for them. The odds were still stacked against them, but then Bucky knew a little something about slim odds. He had never been one to pray. But he wished for them all the success they could possibly have.

_“Sorry for the wait, Steve. I know it’s been a few weeks. You didn’t panic, did you? I had to do a thing, and didn’t want to steal away to a keyboard.”_

 

**Somewhere in Arizona**  

Bucky found himself in an alleyway again. They were beginning to feel comforting. It was a scorching day, but he’d gotten out of the habit of staying in motels most nights. Beds were still so foreign sometimes.

The last car he’d hitched a ride with played a song called “Amarillo By Morning” that would be in Bucky’s head for days.

He hadn’t chosen where he was going next, yet. He’d simply left San Pedro, and now he somehow had wads of wrapped hamburgers in a stuffed fast food bag in front of him in this alley.

As he unwrapped one and took a bite, a face covered in scraggly fur poked around a low corner and stared.

Bucky sat mostly still, slowing chewing something from the wrapper he’d chosen. Eventually, a filthy gray dog swayed into view, hunching his head down and creeping toward Bucky.

Bucky considered the sandwich left in his hands, until the dog got a few yards away from him. Then he slowly held it out and tossed it, so that it would land at the dog’s feet.

Everything about the day seemed rather hazy to Bucky, despite the bright sun. When the dog was done with his first piece, he cautiously inched toward Bucky again, and Bucky threw him another chunk of food. The pattern continued, with the two of them working their way through the bag.  

Then Bucky felt something in him give a little. He leaned his face against his forearm and realized his cheeks were wet.

He missed Nat. He missed Steve. He missed Sam.

He didn’t know what he was doing, and yet he couldn’t stop, not yet.

Bucky sat there as sobs overtook him, feeling nothing but a sharp ache in his chest.

When he couldn’t sob anymore, he threw the rest of the food to the dog and walked away.

_“Nat, I’m-”_

Delete delete delete.

_“Nat, there’s…”_

Delete.

_“Nat. I love you. I’m sorry.”_

Send.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next -- the final chapter. Bucky's searching comes to an end. What will he find?


	4. The Magnetic Map of the Ocean Floor

It had been a while since an old dead drop had paid off.

One of the benefits of an improved memory was remembering many places where money had gotten squirrelled away over the years. He’d checked more than half a dozen total while he travelled, and only two early ones had paid off at all. They had each tided him over for a bit. The rest were unsurprisingly gone.

When he ran out of money, Bucky had other options for cash. He could pick pockets fairly competently. Or if he just wanted to stop traveling for a bit and stay in one place, he’d beg for change. If the town was big enough - and especially if he needed a break from overthinking things - he’d find a hardware store and join the other drifters and migrant workers in the parking lot looking for day work.

Some nights he would dream that he could still feel the old red star on his arm… a branded mark from those that built and owned him. He was an army’s property, as much as any tank or plane was. He would wake up with a cold sweat and remind himself that the truth was different now. That he belonged to himself… and maybe to some other people who cared about him.  

 

**New Orleans**

Her name had been on Bucky’s mind since the day he left Steve’s house, months ago.

Raisa. The girl who ruined the shot.

He had dragged his feet and agonized and delayed doing something about her. But he’d known since his earliest research where she was: New Orleans.

In 2003, in the Ukraine, Bucky had been sent to eliminate a traitor to his owner -- an underling who looked to be making plans to get out and go straight. The man had too many secrets he’d take with him, though, and his escape was unacceptable. Bucky was sent to take him out, in what should have been a simple shot.

But his handlers did not tell Bucky that a young girl might be involved. About seven years old, and so happy to see her father that day, she leapt up into Bucky’s line of fire, and he spooked the target by botching the shot to miss her.

The target grabbed her and ran.

It was pure luck that Natasha had been there… that she had disobeyed the Soldier, and left his bed to follow him to his mission. She cornered the target and carried the girl away while Bucky finished the job.

Bucky remembered the girl's face and voice so clearly. He could have killed her. He would have killed her father in front of her. What happened wasn’t much better. Bucky thought about her frequently… what the rest of her life looked like after that.

Now he finally had a bit of that answer.

On Monday afternoons, Raisa left her shotgun-style rental house in the Marigny - a low-rent neighborhood full of leftist and artistic types - and went to her favorite coffee shop with her laptop in tow. Her partner usually stayed behind at home; Imani Collins was a statuesque, dark-skinned woman with long dreadlocks and a penchant for forties-influenced tailored men’s suits. Bucky could appreciate that about her.

Bucky had also learned that his luck with dead drops was greatly improving. Not far from the empty pedestal for a destroyed statue of Robert E. Lee, he uncovered a still-intact ammo box with fifteen thousand dollars of unmarked, nonsequential cash.

Jackpot.

The trouble was, he had to assume Raisa would recognize him as the man who killed her father. He couldn’t give her the money directly.

Nor was their mail slot really the best way to get them 15k. They were young, savvy women; they wouldn’t write it off as sheer luck. Thay may well hand the money over for an investigation. Bucky would have to find another way to convince them to keep it.

So he kept up his surveillance.

When it wasn’t a Monday, Raisa could often be found at her art gallery Uptown. Bucky had managed to slip in when she was away getting lunch one day, and her intern was watching the place. The pieces were good, Bucky thought. Not the sentimental stuff he saw most places. He felt something when he looked at each one, even if he didn’t know the particular histories that the artists explored. He felt them saying something, demanding their own existence. Claiming their presence.

Raisa might be happy. He was glad she had a business like this. She was young, and it couldn’t have been easy to start. Maybe more money would help.

Slowly, a plan began to form in Bucky’s head. He’d need a cover story. And a new shirt. And a clipboard. He fussed over creating some paperwork, then he bought manila envelopes. He rented a hotel, and showered and trimmed his beard.

24 hours later - on a Monday afternoon - he was in an alley near her house again, hair pulled back in an attempt to look professional. He was nervous, and was a bit farther away than his usual observation spot. But he could see Raisa’s hair from a distance as she climbed into her car and left.

Bucky tried to wait ten minutes, but made it only six before his anxiety got the better of him. He took a deep breath, and rounded the corner.

Raisa and Imani lived on the second floor, up a rickety wooden staircase up to a plant-covered porch.

He was soon knocking on Raisa’s door. Her partner answered.

Bucky smiled.

“Hi there! I’m Jack Monroe. I’m with Wilson, Stevens and Alianoff, attorneys at law.” Bucky aimed for pleasantly bored as he rattled off the information.  “Is a, uh…” He checked his clipboard. “ Is a Reesa Ivanoff home?”

The partner was quite taken aback.  Bucky hoped he had startled her just enough that the relief of discovering he was trying to give her money might blind her better judgment a bit.

“She’s not here right now,” Imani said. “What is this about?”

“Oh,” Bucky scoffed warmly and waved a hand. “Nothing to worry about. In fact, it’s a bit of a boon. There was a class action suit, and Miss Ivanoff made some money out of the deal!”

“She wasn’t a part of any class action suit.”

“Oh she might not have known. You know how these big cases work.” Bucky looked again at his paperwork, feigning confusion. “Y’know, I’m sorry, I’m serving for, like, four different cases here. The award varies, but everybody’s getting a little something.” Bucky tried to look charming as he made the cash symbol with his fingers.

Imani looked unimpressed, but she hadn’t closed the door yet.

“I, can, uh… sorry!” He chuckled as he loosened paperwork from his clipboard and shuffled it, a breeze threatening to send it everywhere.

The idea was that his fussing with paperwork - right after mentioning money to give her - might lead to an invitation inside. But the woman stood where she was and folded her arms as Bucky feigned his struggle.

These young women were definitely too savvy to make this easy.

“Well I just need to get her signature on some paperwork-”

“No one here is signing anything,” the woman moved to close the door. “Have your bosses call us and make an appointment-”

“No, please, miss, it’s a short form, see? I need… I need to get my job done. Or there will be… consequences.”

Imani paused what she was doing and measured him.

“And this envelope looks big,” Bucky continued, pulling the crumpled manila package out from under his arm. “This is above board, I don’t mean to offend. I just really… Times are tough, y'know? I need to get my job done.”

He pulled out the shortest form he had, and showed it to her.

“This is just…” Bucky said. “Well, I’m supposed to give the money to Miss Ivanoff directly.”

“She Mrs. Collins now. We got married out of state.”

“Ah, you’re… you’re legally married? Okay, okay cool. I, uh… that’s fantastic. Progress, right? I’m still getting used to that one.” He tried to smile warmly. “Well in that case, you can sign for it."

At that, he lifted the envelope and clipboard and handed both to her.

She let go of the door and slowly reached toward the envelope, still weighing the options.

That’s when Bucky saw it. On a chair behind Imani sat Raisa’s laptop.

As he realized what it was, a car pulled up behind him in the driveway below, and a door opened and shut.

“Imani, I was an idiot again,” a voice said behind Bucky.

The money weighed heavily in Bucky’s hand. Imani backed away from him in suspicion, and he was certain his face had fallen lower than the porch beneath his feet.

Raisa’s footsteps rattled the staircase as she approached.

Bucky was frozen to the spot.

Raisa reached the porch already alarmed. “What’s going on?” she said as she surveyed the scene.

Bucky could hardly move, but he lifted his head just a little, and slowly met her eyes.

Raisa took him in slowly. She stopped stock still, and all the color drained out of her face. Her mouth opened in shock and horror.

Bucky took a step back away from her, despite it taking him further away from the staircase exit. He didn’t want to frighten her any more than he already had. He dropped the money and clipboard and tried to will his feet to move again.

“What are you doing here?” She said coldly.

“I… uh…”

“Get out,” she growled.

He took another step toward the second story drop over the railing of the porch.

“GET… THE FUCK… AWAY FROM ME!!”

She lunged for the things he dropped and shoved them at his chest in a rage. He instinctively grabbed them and jumped. He heard Imani’s low voice while Raisa screamed.

“YOU MONSTER! YOU FUCKING MONSTER! HOW DARE YOU COME HERE!”

Imani’s voice got louder as she clearly tried to get the inconsolable Raisa back inside.

“DO YOU WANT TO KILL ME TOO? IS THAT WHAT YOU’RE HERE FOR? THEN DO IT, YOU BASTARD. SEE WHAT YOU GET.”

He blinked away tears and stood there frozen under the porch. He willed her to say every terrible thing she could. He willed her to forget this, to heal, to feel safe again. Two neighbors opened front doors to look at her screaming.

“WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO DO THIS? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU!”

He didn’t remember leaving their property. He didn’t remember finding the river, and walking the several blocks to the French Quarter. He didn’t remember how he got there, but he was suddenly on the empty end of Bourbon street, tourists bobbing and babbling a block down, and in front of him some dirty concrete stoops adorning pale pink and yellow residences.

He only remembered her screaming.

He sat down on the nearest stoop, feeling as lost and undone as he ever had. He thought this would get easier. He thought he’d figured out how to hurt people less. He thought with the hole gone out of his head, things would start making sense. He’d have a better grasp on himself and his own business.

Instead, it all slipped through his fingers just as fast as it ever did.

Nothing he had done made any sense. Nothing accomplished anything. He put his head in his hands and despaired.

On the edge of his awareness, a presence gently lighted on him. He looked up to see a shadow standing in front of him.

The person came closer, and he recognized the shape of her backlit hips. Nat’s face emerged out of the shadow.

And he felt a little less lost.

She slowly came and sat down beside him on the stoop.

“How you’d find me?” Bucky asked.

“Oh, I’ve had eyes on Raisa for years,” Nat said. “The day of the hit, she saw you. She saw us both. I never knew when someone might get ambitious.”

Bucky nodded.

“I probably could have stopped my surveillance when you were outed last year,” she continued. “I think I kept on just out of fondness for her.” She smiled. “Not wanting to fall out out of touch. I wanted to see how the gallery fared.”

He stared at the ground and chewed his lip. “You told your guy to keep an eye out for me too. You knew I’d come.”

“I thought you might.”

“I just want to make something right,” Bucky whispered.

“I know.” She put a hand on his. “Believe me, I do.”

He sat, so confused, and he tried to make sense of the jumble in his head.

“How do you… how do you do this?” He stared at her, searching.

Nat examined his face, looking for something herself.

She finally leaned in and said, “I started off… by surrounding myself with people who loved me. Making my home base there.” She wrapped an arm under his and took his hand in hers. “Much cushier position to work from,” she continued.

“I can’t go home yet.”

“Why not?”

“I have to fix something first.”

“What do you have to fix before you come home? Maybe I can help if you tell me.”

He finally spoke out loud what had eaten at him.

“D.C. was different.”

Nat looked at him quizzically. “What?”

“I left you alive before that. On purpose.”

Nat continued to stare, looking for more clues.

“But in D.C.,” Bucky continued, “they told me your name and I heard your voice and I knew something was wrong but I was gonna do it anyway. If Steve hadn’t distracted me, I would have blown your head open, Natalia. Right there on the pavement, that would have been the end.”

“And how many wipes did it take them to get that one... partial… temporary victory? About 13 years worth?”

She didn’t understand how much that didn’t matter.

Nat sighed. “Some things are stronger than we are, James. That doesn’t make us weak. Or wrong.”

Bucky tried to take in her words. They felt distant, but important.

She continued. “You know, you’ve got a good idea here, my love. The execution is just a bit clumsy. People get suspicious about money these days, even cash. I have some very specific college scholarships that I’ve funded. Some targeted contributions to nursing homes. Things like that.”

“You never told me anything like that,” he said numbly.

Nat smiled. “You didn’t ask.”

Bucky smiled ruefully. “Yeah. That sounds like me.”

He felt her staring at him.

“Let’s talk to my accountant soon,” she said. “I’ve got some things I can show you. At Steve’s house.”

“You’re not happy when I’m there,” he said.

“That’s not true!” she immediately protested.

He tried again. “When I *was* there…” Bucky looked at her, clear-eyed, and held her gaze. He wanted to be gentle, but he also needed her honesty. “You weren’t happy.”

Nat looked at him a long time. Her mouth did the thing it does... when she’s trying to be stoic, but can’t.

“You know the disagreements you’d have with Steve?” she said. “When you couldn’t shake the suspicion that he wanted you to be who you used to be?”

Bucky started to protest that he’d never ask that of her… that the woman she had become was perfect, perfectly her, and he wouldn’t want anything but exactly who she had fought to be. But he quickly realized. She knew that, just as much as he knew it to be true of Steve. He nodded. “That sucks. That feeling.”

He leaned toward her, and she put her forehead to his.

“Steve thinks I blame myself,” Bucky confided.

“That’s not quite right though, is it?”

Bucky shook his head. Then he took a deep breath and sighed. He thought about the house, and the fields in the back, and about his half-assed attempts at growing things.

“What’s Steve planting now?” he asked balefully.

“He’s harvesting,” she corrected. “Your corn.”

Bucky stared at her, and time stopped for a second as he grappled with confusion.

“...what?” he asked.

“You grew a LOT of corn. He’s built new storage for it.”

Bucky didn’t know why he was so shocked. But the news made no sense to him at all. Corn. In storage. He tried to work out how that was possible.

“But I wasn’t there to tend it,” he said.

Nat smiled at him. “Steve’s been out in that field every single day with a book on pests and fungi. I think he’s examined every leaf on every plant at least once. The strawberries have been delicious. Those fat little carrots are already put up.” She furrowed her brow. “I don’t know for sure, but I think somebody is going to have to do something about your potatoes soon.”

Potatoes. Berries. Food. He… what did he even do? It didn’t make any sense.

“Food… food comes from a store,” he protested halfheartedly.

His cheeks felt wet and he was even more confused.

But the thought that something grew, and that Steve tended it, made his heart feel less tight than it had in… since he could remember.

“Come home. For a while. Get some rest.” She stroked his hair again. “Eat,” she smiled. “There’s plenty of food.”

He leaned into her hand. Then he curled himself down to put his head in her lap, wrapping both arms around the leg she’d crossed on top of the other. She kept stroking his hair.

“It’s admirable what you’re doing,” she said. “It’s important. But you didn’t create this damage all by yourself. There’s a limit to what you can do by yourself. And there are limits to what can be directly repaired.”

“I just wanna… be of some better use to people.”

“You have been, already. Please give yourself credit for that.”

She kept stroking his hair.

“It’s okay to take some time to figure out what the work is that you’ve got to do. You’re not wasting time.” She put a still hand on top of his head and leaned in a bit to emphasize her point. “Hear me when I say that. This wasn’t a waste of time.”

He hung on to her every word, and every time her hand brushed him.

“You’re not wasting time,” she repeated. “This stoop today is where you needed to be. To face all this, really face it. It’s not a straight line, this work. It’s not easy.” She paused, and he felt himself shudder. “You’re brave to face it,” she said quietly.

He breathed in her smell and let it calm him, just a little.

“I do still have nightmares,” she said quietly. “But they get… less devastating. Less earth-shattering. More ordinary.”

He kept hold of her leg, and pulled her scent into him again. And he thought of Steve, in the field studying a book of bugs. Spending his time on what Bucky had planned. He briefly imagined Steve attempting to protect Bucky’s seedlings with his shield, before he remembered Steve didn’t have it anymore. He thought that might be the only thing stopping him from using it to protect the crops.

He wondered what colors of green it all was.

 _Come home_ . It echoed in his head. _Even for just a while._

He nuzzled her leg, and nodded.

They held each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for sticking with some intense chapters! What do you think?
> 
> I think after all this hard work, Bucky deserves a bit of fluff. Please stay tuned for the last story of the series, soon to be posted, entitled "Love is Soil."


End file.
